Breaking Beauty (Devils Aces MC): Vegas Titans Series

by Loren, Celia

  Though she was swaddled in a heavy winter coat for commuting purposes, below this, she'd poured herself into the glittery skintight leotard which clung to her body—obscenely, she thought—in all the right places. After Zaida's influence, she wore thigh-high leather boots polished to shine. Her lips were cherry red, her lashes spread wide and painted coal black. Glimpsing her reflection in the shiny walls of the casino lobby, Romy had stopped short: she hadn't recognized herself.

  Zaida answered the door with very little fanfare. “Late,” she pronounced. “Unacceptable.”

  Romy glanced at her watch: 7:01pm. So this was how it was going to be.

  “I'm sorry, it won't happen—”

  “Don't. Wear. Watch.” Zaida held out her extended palm, an eyebrow raised. “No need.”

  Begrudgingly, Romy removed the wristband and handed it to Zaida. She hated to take it off—this fusty old piece of jewelry was the only remaining token from her birth parents. Like the Little Orphan Annie with her locket, she'd kept the watch on her person as long as she could remember. She watched carefully as Zaida slid the timepiece into a small clutch at her side.

  “How will I know when I'm late, if 'no watch'?” Romy said, trying her hand at a joke. Zaida rolled her eyes so viciously, Romy worried they'd fall out of her head. Then she watched as her new boss strode back into the hotel room. Only the sharp twist of Zaida's ponytail indicated that Romy should follow.

  Romy saw quickly that Suite 607 was unlike other hotel rooms in The Windsor—for one, it was entirely unfurnished. There wasn't so much as an end table in the whole space. Chandelier light fell from overhead and languished in the patterned carpet, while a panoramic window framed a brilliant slice of the Strip. And just as she had in the corridor the night before, Zaida strode to the back of the space with an eerie confidence—though there didn't seem to be an exit, where she was headed.

  “Where are the other dealers?” Romy asked, timid. She tried to gracefully readjust herself inside the sleeve.

  “I tell you already: 7:01.” Zaida pursed her lips. “No one has ever say to you, 'to be on time is to be late?'”

  Before Romy could formulate so much as a snappy retort, Zaida had led her to the far corner of the hotel room. The woman proceeded to place her green-taloned palm flat against the wallpaper: an LED glow materialized below her hand.

  “Another secret door?!” Romy gasped. A panel of wall had already slid open to reveal what appeared to be an elevator—still, Zaida snapped:

  “ONLY. OTHER. RULE. IS. BE QUIET.”

  A chastised Romy climbed aboard. The inside of the elevator was chrome-sleek, and death silent. The women's ascent was ear-popping fast. Though she was disoriented, Romy attempted to map in her head where in the casino she figured them to be headed: how far above the floor were they rocketing? And why wasn't the high-roller room in the secret basement, like Lefty's lodge? She grew more insecure, not quite knowing where in the building she was—Romy resolved to take strong mental notes of every part of her evening. She didn't like the idea of being lost in the labyrinthine passageways that apparently made up this place she thought she knew well.

  The Windsor's Needle was an impressive sight, even for the Sunset Strip—its bright blinking eye was one of the first things travelers saw from the highway as they came in to Vegas. Rising some sixty stories above the main hotel, the Needle floor wasn't officially habitable—guests weren't allowed up here—but Romy had entertained the occasional rumor of secret hook-ups happening in the tippy-top of the hotel. People said you could see all of Nevada from up there. Though she figured there was no way this was true, Romy had always been curious. Had even tried, in vain, to find the service elevators on the main floor which might lead to the first of several roof decks.

  And so Romy gasped again, as the elevator doors opened. The panoramic windows of this floor fully circled and enclosed a small space, creating the illusion that there were no walls at all. All of Vegas was spread out below this room, this place that was quite obviously the Needle itself—though the city was visible only from the low lip of pulsing neon light hovering beyond the sills. The street below made the Needle look like it was burning slowly, from the feet up.

  Scores of women trailed by like parade floats, each wearing slight variations on Romy's glittery sleeve. They were razor-thin, glamorous, perfect beauties—the women of magazine spreads. She took them to be a combination of servers and dealers, though who could tell the difference in these clothes? Romy didn't recognize a single face from the main floor. Imagining Paulette and Kali and Annisette giggling into their bustiers a mile below was all but impossible. Drawing breath, Romy knew innately that there were to be no “unofficial union breaks” up here, at her new job.

  If she hadn't seen any of the women servers before, Romy thought she did recognize certain faces among the clientele—though they were masked as often as not behind thick, black sunglasses. Certain athletes, perhaps. A well-known comedian. Two or three reality TV stars, divvying up a rock of cocaine on a glass table just in front of a window. All of the players were men. All of them wore expensive suits, cologne, and shiny shoes. So these are the high-rollers, Romy thought. Suddenly bad boy Bryson—for all his bravado—looked down-to-earth.

  There was a circular bar in the room's center; this served as a central hub. Zaida gripped Romy's wrist and led her briskly around the elaborate set-up, where there looked to be a hundred kinds of top-shelf liquor rising across many shelves. Zaida was all-business. She didn't allow Romy so much as a moment to ponder her new surroundings as it all shot past her gaze in a blur. Whirling towards the side of the Needle farthest from the elevator bank, finally Zaida paused at what appeared to be the room's only vacant blackjack table. “Here,” she said. “This table yours, Adelaide.”

  The blackjack table was pristine. The felt looked brand-new, and the cards were slippery-sleek in her fingers. Zaida contemplated Romy with the condescending gaze of an impatient teacher: “You know how to do from here, I hope?” Grasping her new station for support, Romy managed a nod. This seemed to satisfy Zaida, who vanished back into the darkness with a flick of her ponytail.

  A few heartbeats passed. Romy attempted to catch her breath, though her uniform made it difficult. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the erratic light.

  As she finally began to shuffle the cards—from habit, if nothing else—men began to move her way. A few of them lurched away from their other tables, apparently mid-game. Romy heard a few cat-calls above the bass-y thump of house music, which she determined was moving across the room in pulses from a DJ booth mounted high in a corner. Several men made a show of peeling their sunglasses down their faces and waggling their eyebrows her way. She was the newcomer, clearly. They set on her like a wounded gazelle.

  I can do this, she whispered to herself, gaining confidence as she moved her fingers around the decks. These were, after all, nothing but the KEM cards her memory knew well. This was nothing but a game she already knew how to deal. And if the crowd up here was less Jersey, more B-Listing actor, well...men were a game she knew how to play, too. There was a safety, a comfort to be had in the sameness.

  “Gentleman, please,” Romy said, feigning a blush just like the one she'd given Lou Valentine earlier that week. “We have all night!” This secured a few laughs. Several men sat down, setting high stacks of black ($100), purple ($500), and orange ($1,000) chips on the table. A small army of cocktail waitresses glided across the room to Romy's corner and began to take drink orders. It was happening so fast!

  “The name of the game is Blackjack,” Romy said, a little lamely. “Place your bets now gentlemen. And good luck.”

  Appearing suddenly, and from the shadows (her m.o., it seemed...) Zaida was once again at Romy's elbow: “Wait. You get attention. Is very good,” she whispered. “I think now is good time for tournament.” The four or five men seated at the table leaned towards their dealer at these words, as if they'd been waiting for the word: tournament. Blackjack tournaments weren
't so frequent on the main floor. Romy furrowed her brow.

  “I'm not sure I remember all the ins and outs. Of a tournament, I mean.”

  “Is like bicycle,” Zaida said. Then, for the first time, she grinned. Her whole face seemed to strain with the effort. “You do once, you never forget.” Before Romy could ask another question, her supervisor had glided away. By now, the three or four men seated and the several circling were chanting the word in drunk mirth: Tournament! Tournament! Tournament!

  “You don't have to do anything you don't want to, Romy Adelaide,” came a scratched baritone from her right hand. It took a moment to pair voice with face. He was seated by the windows, for one, and therefore rimmed with that hellish light. But she felt the recognition first from a heat in her chest that spread across her arms, seeming to loosen her joints, relax her skin. Meaning arrived in her mouth first. “Bryson?” she asked, trembling.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Zaida had the power and presence of a horsefly—she could be both everywhere and invisible at once, and bite your ass when you least expect it. For the opening moments of Romy's tournament, her boss was all instruction: “Fifty thousand dollars buy-in!” she'd declared, eyeing Bryson's end of the table like day-old fish. “Only real guest.” But before Romy could ask for clarification on these strange new rules, Zaida had disappeared. Turning, she'd seen Bryson grimacing up at her from behind a fat stack of orange chips.

  Finding Bryson at her blackjack table once more was mostly wonderful, but not a little humiliating. Whatever he'd been thinking before about her dubious night-job was surely spiked with the new, untoward facts of this “promotion”—namely, her salacious body sleeve. Romy now felt deeply self-conscious of all the flesh her uniform exposed. In fact, she had a difficult time meeting the leery gaze of all the other men here in the Needle, who stared at her body freely, and with unabashed imagination.

  She'd of course have preferred that Bryson not see this. What great relationships have ever started with a skankily clad blackjack dealer and a monied drifter? Then, of course, she was getting ahead of herself: there was a whole volley of neurotic, girly questions still demanding response. Like, what was he doing up here? How did he have this kind of cash to begin with? Why did Zaida refer to him as “not a real guest”? And mainly, was his presence a coincidence of tourism, or had he really put in an effort to track her all the way up to the Needle?

  She decided, at last, to be glad of his presence—she felt safer knowing he was by her side. Bryson's muscles seemed as uncontainable as ever. Today, he was pillowing out of a light blue button-down. No reason she couldn't enjoy herself a little tonight too.

  And was it her imagination, or did something about him seem protective? Though he wore the sturdy black sunglasses as usual, something in his manner was decidedly more severe than as in their previous encounter. He didn't jiggle his arms. He didn't joke. His jaw was set. And whenever she leaned across the table to place cards, Bryson leaned forward as well—as if to keep her dangling neckline beyond the watch of the other players.

  The tournament began with six men, who would winnow their number down to two before a final take-all round. Taking brief stock of the table, Romy noticed an older Asian businessman with a crooked grin and many gold rings; a has-been eighties rapper with the weatherworn face of a drug addict; two bland, blonde American businessmen who might as well have been twins for all their similar mannerisms and...a particularly grisly brand of high-roller; an obese, freckled, older man who referred to himself in third person as, “The Dap.”

  “Very good,” Zaida muttered from the shadows, as soon as the table was assembled and purchased. “Very much money here. Very good.” She was right, there was $300,000 on the table in front of these men, and that was just for the first round of one tournament.

  “Let's get this hootenanny on the road, doll,” The Dap bellowed, sloshing some of a martini down his maroon velvet suit. “Papa wants a peep-show.” Though she was miffed at this remark, Romy took it in stride—even as she felt Bryson's whole body constrict with rage beside her. She pressed on. She dealt the first hand. And the men applauded, each in various degrees of intoxication.

  There were no amateurs here: once the cards were played, the men grew silent. Serious. The older businessman murmured under his breath in Cantonese as the gentlemen rounded the table, hitting, staying, splitting, and doubling-down appropriately. To quell the silence, Romy repeated a hunk of Zaida's vague instructions:

  “We'll continue like this, eliminating a player as soon as he busts his bankroll, until there are two of you left. Table minimum is $1000 per hand, natural blackjack pays 3:2, dealer stands on soft-17, you can split pairs up to four times, Aces once, and double-down on any first hits. The top two players in the first round get to keep any profits they might make from the house in the first round. Bet big, win big, and manage your risk gentlemen...” Romy cast her eyes about for Zaida, briefly flustered. She still didn't know how the tournament concluded. Bryson spoke quietly in her direction: “It's okay, Romy. You just deal, alright? All you have to do is deal.”

  Something in the heft of his voice startled her anew. Gone entirely was his playful banter from the week before, his talk of high school. And though she wasn't thinking of money, Romy noticed that Bryson was holding tight to his chips this game; and betting only the table minimum. She surmised that there would be no coin flicks of twenty-five dollar tips; she didn't care. He didn't size her up, either—he seemed utterly concentrated on the game. Romy took a deep breath and pressed on.

  The first man to bust out was one half of the set of blonde business twins. When he lost, the man slammed two hands down on the green felt—a surprisingly violent gesture, considering his previously composed demeanor. “FUCK. ME!” the man yelled. “And fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you—” he began, pointing at each man along the table in turn and landing on Romy. His finger hung in the air inches from her face, quivering and furious—though soon the stealthy security guard Titus materialized, and began to guide the man towards the doorway.

  Still, over the uproar, Romy heard The Dap yell: “You wish, asshat!” When he turned back towards the table, The Dap's eyes adhered closely to Romy's figure. She felt his eyes on her skin like a hand on her throat.

  “Romy. Romy. Focus, Romy,” this was Bryson again. “Don't listen to a thing they say, sweetheart.”

  “Sweetheart?! What're you, her father?” The Dap rose and leaned across the felt. His shirt rose above his belly, exposing a dirty wifebeater and a fleshy underside.

  “I just think we should be polite to a lady, is all,” Bryson said. He gripped his beer—a Coors—tight. There was the subtlest sort of menace in his voice.

  “Lady? Lady?” The Dap made a show of squinting through the darkness. “I don't see a lady. You fellas see a lady?” The rest of the table snorted, a small spectrum of liking-the-joke. Bryson was silent. Romy was still.

  “You're right, guy. We should be polite to a lady,” said The Dap, sitting down at last. “But we should be ruthless...with a whore.” He folded pocked arms across his suit and leaned back, a satisfied smile on his twisted lips. He grinned up at Romy then with a look more galling, even, than Lefty's or Zaida's original appraisals in the cellar. The Dap saw neither object nor animal when he looked at Romy—he saw a victim.

  In another cold flash of instinct, Romy followed the feeling of a set of eyes penetrating deep into her back. She scanned the room and saw Lefty DiMartino himself stepping out of the elevator. He smirked idly her way, appearing to drink in the scene of her tournament. He wiggled his eyebrows.

  Romy suddenly felt short of breath. Her fingers trembled. “Just a moment,” she managed, before locking her chip box down and lurching away from the table.

  She found Zaida spying on the bar, prepared to pounce on a young server whose hair was sliding precariously away from the mandated ponytail. Romy gathered her courage and stepped forward. She tapped her boss on the shoulder.

  “Hi
, Zaida...I'm sorry to bother you, but—”

  “Where is your table?”

  “I'm just taking a quick breather. I have...I have a question.”

  “NO BREATHER!” her boss screeched. “NO QUESTIONS, NO TALKING!”

  “I just need to know,” Romy pleaded. “Please tell me—what are the stakes in the tournament's last round?”

  Zaida seemed to cool and set her perfectly polished face. Then, the strained grimace from before reappeared. The two women stood for a moment like that, regarding one another.

  “Please,” Romy begged. She knew her table's—Lefty's—security's—eyes were all on her. If she could imagine what Zaida would say, she couldn't imagine what to do with the information. She'd given her word, hadn't she? She'd seen the casino's secret rooms! And most of all, a reasonable part of her recalled the casual haunt in Lefty's early caution: this conversation never happened. What else would have never happened, were she to leave the Needle now? If she ran for the exits now, what would they do to her?

  Abruptly, and with an unusual affection, Zaida curled her talons down and cupped the bottom halves of Romy's full breasts. She bounced them for a moment in her palms, grinning her grimace at the attention this garnered from several bar patrons. Then she leaned in to Romy's ear and whispered, with not a little tenderness: “You smart girl, I think.”